Italian Frozen Desserts

Frozen desserts have a long history in Italy. Italians love their gelato, Italian-style ice cream. Gelato (shown in this figure) is a lot like American ice cream, but Italian gelato is usually much more intensely flavored. Strawberry gelato tastes first and foremost of berries, for example.

You can find dozens of common gelato flavors. In addition to the basics, such as vanilla and chocolate, many uniquely Italian flavors exist:

In addition to gelato, Italians make another kind of frozen dessert called a granita (see this figure). Granite (plural for granita) are scraped ices, much like the Italian ices sold by street vendors in North America. They have a granular, icy texture, somewhat like a Sno-Kone.